12-08-2011, 03:03 AM
I am re-reading the Pulitzer Prize winning book by the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker entitled "The Denial of Death" (Free Press, 1973). I am not going to try to summarize an entire book I read for the first time three and a half years ago, but here's the gist: man is an exceptional being in the way that we think we are different, special and immortal, but we aren't. Follow along in your hymnal here: http://www.ernestbecker.org/ and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death and here: http://www.amazon.com/Denial-Death-Ernes...0684832402
The taking of something from an "other" as a trophy probably helps accentuate the idea that the trophy-taker is unique, supreme (at least at that moment of encounter), and yet perhaps envious of something the "other" had that he didn't, doesn't or doesn't understand, and hopes he can somehow accrue through the talisman or trophy.
Indeed, why do conquering peoples acquire the trappings of the civilization they just helped destroy?
The taking of something from an "other" as a trophy probably helps accentuate the idea that the trophy-taker is unique, supreme (at least at that moment of encounter), and yet perhaps envious of something the "other" had that he didn't, doesn't or doesn't understand, and hopes he can somehow accrue through the talisman or trophy.
Indeed, why do conquering peoples acquire the trappings of the civilization they just helped destroy?
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"